Visit our BLOG SPOT Useful links this week: Tsunami Relief Fund Send a New Year eCard Election Reform Discussion Turn Your Back on Bush Green Party Videos 51 Capital March Ohio Recount Steeped in Fraud There is something you can do. Democracy Week Commentary January 1, 2005 The presidential vote recount in Ohio is over - or is it?  The Green and Libertarian Party candidates who paid for the recount may have a claim of fraud against election officials and at least one voting machine company. If they can't get a new recount, they ought to at least get their money back. Democracy Week joins people across the world in a somber recognition of the New Year, in remembrance of the many thousands of people who lost their lives in the recent tsunami and earthquake. Those who survived need our help desperately - many millions of people are not only mourning the loss of loved ones, but are also without basic necessities such as clean drinking water, food, and medical supplies. To help the victims, please make a contribution: The Red Cross and Red Cresecent Societies To see raw footage of New Year's Eve around the world, as well as of the disaster in Asia, visit tv.reuters.com. Here's what happened. Any Ohio county did not have to do a full hand recount if a random sample of three percent of the ballots in their county matched the original count. The first fraud count: Not all the counties, if any, pulled the test precincts at random, nor did they allow the trained observers to see how the test precincts were selected. Rep. John Conyers, ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to all the presidential candidates, in which he he stated: "At least one precinct in Medina County that would not have voting anomalies was both carefully pre-selected and pre-counted, so that the initial 3% recount that is mandated by the Ohio Secretary of State would not return a mismatch between the initial tally and the recount." [Read Rep. Conyers' Letter] Once they selected the test precincts, some counties shared that information with the voting machine technicians, who then made adjustments on the machines and gave advice on how to create an exact match. That would be the second fraud count. Technicians from Triad, the company operating many of the counting machines, visited 41 of the 88 county election offices. Triad technicians admitted that they helped the counties avoid the full recount by faking the match on the three percent count. [Read a transcript of the admissions]. When all else failed, election officials changed ballots to make the count come out right. An election official stated that she "did not want the hand count and the machine count to be different because they did not want to do a complete hand count," according to a trained observer quoted in Rep. Conyers’ letter. That would be fraud count number three. Mr. Conyers also wrote to Triad, asking them to provide information regarding the company's ability to control the machines remotely, which a Triad representative admitted. [Read Rep. Conyers' Letter to Triad] Fraud count number four would be that the Secretary of State, who also served as Mr. Bush’s state campaign chairman, refused to issue guidelines to the counties for the handling of undervotes, overvotes and other issues, a clear violation of the “equal protection” ruling of Bush v. Gore.  Counties used wildly different rules during the count and the recount, depriving the recount parties of true value for their investment. The same Secretary Blackwell may have been a party to the systematic violation of equal voting rights by shorting minority precincts of voting machines, while over seventy extra machines languished in a truck.  The day-long lines in many minority neighborhoods cost Mr. Kerry thousands of votes, by some estimates. This article scratches the surface of what was done in Ohio to suppress and subvert the vote and render the recount meaningless. For in depth reporting, your best source is The Columbus Free Press. What Can You Do? Rep. Conyers has said that he will stand to object to the acceptance of the Electoral College vote when it arrives at a joint session of Congress at 1pm on January 6.  Other House members will join him. One Senator is needed to stand with them. Senators don't want to look like lunatics. They need support from home. The most effective thing Americans can do THIS MONDAY AND TUESDAY is to print out the Conyers' letters from the links in this article, write a quick letter to the editor as a cover letter, and hand carry them to local newspaper editorial writers. If a Senator with a concern for democracy can be found, then the Ohio mess will become a major story as committees investigate and the mainstream press piles on.  The chance of it overturning the presidential election is miniscule, but it will set the stage for election reforms and for the punishment of criminals in high places, and it will dissolve the notion of a present mandate. A useful cover letter would state that, regardless of party, Americans must insist on the fair and non-partisan administration of elections, and that our Senators should stand with Rep. Conyers to demand an investigation and a pledge of reform before this year’s election is accepted by Congress. We are too great a country to accept damaged goods instead of a reliably honest election result, or else our claims of spreading democracy to other lands is a sham. Your letter could remind the editors of how many people have sacrificed and died for our freedoms, the emblem of which is, more than our flag, our ballot. After you hand deliver the letter to your newspaper, take a copy to the field offices of your two Senators, if you live within distance. Democracy Week Commentary View at the New Year: Organizing for the Coming Four Years The progressive and peace community is still a bit dazed and confused, as if we had all awakened on November 3 with some sort of emotional disorder: a dissociative problem of some kind, where our own country seems like someone else's Spain under Franco, and our own family members seem oblivious to the rising waters; "Don't all the young people look nice in uniform?"; It is that moment when one doesn't know whether to continue arguing or to simply fall into a glassy-eyed stare, as if behind a martini and too much dark information. Going on is what everybody says must be done, and what nobody feels much like doing. Shall we pass some election reforms, get another cosponsor for the Department of Peace, stand up for our Bill of Rights in our city council chamber? Or shall we just try to meet Rick and Ilsa at the Paris train station and head for some mental Marseille? Do we have the libido in us to see this New Year as a bouncing baby 1776, or is it a defunct 1937 cabaret? Are we energized Tea Party Indians, or Dietrichs longing to be alone with our memories--Kennedy's promised America, the Great Society, the New Deal, honest elections, such as they were? Oh, but the CIA was always out assassinating these Guevarras and Allendes and Kennedys and Kings and Wellstones and the emerging people's movements of the world anyway, so vats ze use? America has always been abottoir and executioner and enabler of Sauds and Husseins and Pinochets, no? Depression of the soul operates by blacking out the love and the positives and smirking behind another martini. There is always enough information to justify any mood one falls into. If 1776, we have voices that resonate with all that: William Rivers Pitt and Ronnie Dugger walk Boston streets today. The inquiring, investigating, white-angry newsroom of the Columbus Free Press reminds us that such things are still possible. The organizations that bring us together to protest, to fund efforts, to give voice to an ever more marginalized Common Sense are still here, and not sent into hiding just yet - though we hear the tanks squeaking nearer. It is now quite clear that, if everyone who wanted to vote in November was allowed to vote, and if every vote was counted properly, the move toward fascism would have been stemmed. It is also clear that it was not bumbling errors that prevented an honest election, but creative, purposeful work by many people dedicated to the hard work of disenfranchising millions of Americans. The most troubling aspect of this is that they have no shame about it; they admit it openly and proudly. If you want to be frightened for the future of this country, that is all you need to know. Read More   Let's Try Democracy by David Swanson Onward Where? December 18, 2004 Mother Jones To the Editor: What do you mean "Onward"? Gitlin imagines we're unaware of all the work and money we just dumped on a candidate who had "Loser" tatooed across his forehead. Gitlin spends most of his article telling us about it, pausing only to ask us to "forget all the blah-blah" about whether the passion was anti-Bush, whether any of it was pro-Kerry. Yet if the platitudes of Gitlin's penultimate paragraph about "concentrating our minds" on reaching 51 percent are going to be realized, or -- better -- surpassed by a movement that aims for a landslide, we will have to understand what we did in terms of what we were up against. We took a corporate, free-trade, pro-private-health-insurance, pro-war Democrat afraid of his own shadow and either beat Bush - as I'm convinced - or came damn close to doing so. But to do so again will require a Republican at least as detested as Bush, and probably more so, because we will be up against greater skepticism about the validity of the vote count and the possibility of victory. [Continued] David Swanson is an activist and writer based in Washington, D.C. David is presently the Media Coordinator at the International Labor Communications Association. Mark Your Calendar! JANUARY 2, 3, & 4: The group 51 Capital March is organizing a three-day march from Baltimore to DC, beginning January 2. JANUARY 6 On January 6 th, 2005 Congress will meet in joint session to certify the 2004 presidential election. On that day, if one member of the House and one member of the Senate object to the certification of the vote, then all members of Congress will finally discuss these issues. On January 6, 2001, not a single Senator would join with the Representatives who demanded an inquiry into the Florida recount. This year, let's make our Senators take a stand! Join Medea Benjamin, John Bonifaz, David Cobb, Congressman John Conyers (invited), Alysia Fischer, George Friday, Rev. Jesse Jackson (invited), Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (invited), Rev. Lennox Yearwood and many others as we: Rally at 10:00 a.m. in Lafayette Park across from the White House. We will then march to Capitol Hill to join with others at the U.S. Capitol at noon. Week of JANUARY 20 Washington, DC Inaugural Protests Planned "Public" space along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. will, for the occasion of the Bush-Cheney inaugural parade on January 20, become tightly-controlled private space, with police turning away protesters in favor of corporate sponsors. Protesters are nevertheless planning to attend, officialdom’s lapse of etiquette and constitutionality notwithstanding. The D.C. Antiwar Network (DAWN) is planning a 9am counter-inauguration rally in D.C. at Malcolm X Park, 16 th St. NW & Euclid. Details http://www.dawndc.net/ For rides to Washington, housing, and information about other counter-inaugural events in D.C. and around the nation, click HERE. http://www.counter-inaugural.org/ The ANSWER Coalition, an antiwar, pro-justice group that was heavily involved in organizing protests against the US attack on Iraq, is hoping to occupy space along the parade route. They are encouraging protesters to arrive before 9am at a location yet unannounced. The group’s lawyers are working to secure permits but have been unsuccessful for nearly a year. Details http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org Other groups are planning to seed the crowd with people who will not carry signs, but who will turn their backs on Mr. Bush when his motorcade approaches. Some will likely reveal banners or shirts as they do so. Details http://www.turnyourbackonbush.org   WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19 - TAKOMA - WASHINGTON, DC - 8PM AN EVENING OF POETIC MUSICAL SATIRE CHRIS CHANDLER PERFORMS FOR COUNTER INAUGURAL The amazing performance poet Chris Chandler performs his biting political and social satire in this Counter-inaugural concert with David Rovics at The Electric Maid - 228 Carrol Ave - Adjacent from the Takoma Metro Stop, admission: $5-20. Can't make it to the show? Here is Chris' tour schedule . You can also sign up for his ever-so-insightful "Muse and Whirled Retort" e-mail newsletter here. You'll enjoy hearing of Chris' regular brushes with Americana as he continues his 14(?) year tour across the county. If you want to hear Chris now, check out these cuts from his latest CD, "Live from the Wholly Stolen Empire." Every week Democracy Week will report on events for the coming week. If you know of an event we should mention, please let us know at events@democracyweek.org. NEXT WEEK'S FEATURES: - Ballot Box Mysteries: What to Believe? - Organization Profile: The League of Pissed-Off Voters Doris "Granny D" Haddock Photo: Jody Hilton, Boston Democracy Week is a common calendar and toolbox for the progressive community, launched by Doris "Granny D" Haddock and volunteers associated with her efforts. Watch it grow each week into a resource to make the next four years imaginable and even a bit joyful. You can be a part of our team! We need experienced activists in every part of the US to serve as volunteer calendar coordinators. Please send us a note if you are willing to participate: Yes@DemocracyWeek.org Subscriptions to Democracy Week are free, but we welcome financial contributions to help us with the costs of publishing Democracy Week. Click here to donate. About Democracy Week / Contact Us   Home - Past Issues - eCards - Classifieds - Blog Spot - Free Subscription - About Us